The Wolfpack

Imagine the kind of person you would be if your only interaction with the outside world, a world you can see from your high rise window but cannot interact with, was through the movies. First off, you would treasure the medium of film more than the average bloke. A close second is, through no fault of your own, you must work harder to define the line separating reality from make believe. First time feature-length documentary filmmaker Crystal Moselle presents a subject she happened to stumble across on New York City’s Lower East Side, The Wolfpack. Sometimes a fascinating study in how not to raise children, The Wolfpack mostly ignores the crux of the entire situation, mental illness, to focus on the situation’s consequences: quirky personalities, fuzzy ideas about the outside world, and a borderline unhealthy fascination with Quentin Tarantino. The Angulo brothers are not allowed outside. This is not a grounding sort of punishment; it is just the way things are. Their parents, mom a Midwestern hippie who found dad, a Peruvian Machu Picchu tour guide, fear for their kids’ safety on the mean streets of New York City. There is more than a good chance the parents learned about these mean streets from Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets and thought that is how it is out there. Not having to dig too deep, the real reason the boys are shut-ins is because of dad, Oscar. There is something not quite right here and Moselle only skirts the issue.

Appearing only briefly on camera, Oscar attempts to explain why he kept his children inside their tiny apartment for their entire lives. In garbled, rambling, drunken speeches, he never quite answers the question. The boys are more forthcoming. One of the sons states, “Dad said he was God; he was enlightened.” Instead of following this most important of white rabbits down the hole, Moselle goes back to chronicling the daily routines and Reservoir Dogs play acting the boys participate in to kill time. The mental illness issue won’t keep at bay; however, it is the catalyst for why and how the boys eventually start venturing outside the apartment.

Seven children in all, each named after a Sanskrit name because the parents are kind of/sort of Hare Krishnas, six boys and one girl, the oldest of the boys are pushing 20 years old now and something finally gives. One of them, I do not remember who, because it is quite challenging to tell the kids apart, just up and wanders outside one day, but he opts to wear a homemade Michael Meyers mask. Naturally, the cops get called and the kid spends some time in a mental hospital. Yet the dam is breached. The boys start going outside in a group, a pack, to explore their neighborhood and even explore as far as Coney Island, although one of them is sure they are being followed and another won’t take off his John Travolta Pulp Fiction garb to go in the water. Another one shaves off his eyebrows.

Moselle weaves in home movies so the audience can bear witness to see these boy-men as youngsters still meandering around the same apartment as they grow up. Hand writing full length movie scripts, creating impressive full body Batman costumes, and celebrating Halloween are just a few of the home movies we are privy to. The family’s only income is from mom, Susanne, who receives money from the state for home schooling the kids. One of the sons explains, “Dad shows his rebellion by not working.” Dad also kept the only key to the apartment, smacked mom around, and would even control which rooms in the apartment a kid could be in at any given time.

Unsurprisingly, there is some hatred seething just off screen. One of the sons refuses to even speak to his father and in a ‘where are they now’ research effort, two have even changed their names. The audience only catches the briefest glimpses of these feelings. Either Moselle couldn’t get it on camera or chose to leave it on the editing room floor to make room for the Coney Island trip or a short film one of the sons was making. The Wolfpack is effective at bringing across how much love the pack has for movies. When they purchase tickets to their first film in an actual movie theater, one of them says he is so excited, “because his ticket money might go to David O. Russell or Christian Bale.” Their first movie was The Fighter.

Oscar finally appears at about the halfway mark and this is about where the film start to drag and feel a bit sterile. We watch Oscar attempt to rationalize and pick words off the ceiling to explain himself but there is no sense to made there. In the oddest bit, we see the aftermath of a full force SWAT team raid on the apartment. We never really learn why this happened but one of them says the police thought there were a bunch of firearms in the place. Moselle opts not to wrap this episode up with any closure. However, Moselle had the tenacity to film the Angulo household for almost five long years. It would require the world’s most talented editors to be able to tie all of the footage together in a comprehensible whole. What we get is an intriguing film; we root for the boys and wish them well, but missing is an extremely powerful undertow beneath the surface full of mental problems, emotional abuse, and outright hatred.